yeah it does. didn't you know, we have to the world's police force. any time there's some injustice in the world, we have to intervene. God forbid we let a country handle it's own problems without us telling every other nation on the planet how to run their lives.

I wouldn't say it's a "world policeman" thing really. We're perfectly happy letting oppressive governments that serve our strategic interests -like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now Egypt once again- deal with democracy protestors with violent crackdowns and persecution. We're making a big stink about Syria because 1)The chauvinists who run the Israeli government right now think getting rid of the Assads will break Hezbollah and leave Syria too screwed up to even complain about the Golan Heights, giving them total control of Northern Israel(and most importantly, the water sources of Northern Israel) for the foreseeable future and 2) plenty of conservatives in the US and Israel see getting rid of the Assads as a potential geopolitical victory against Iran(because they think Syria is an Iranian client rather than an ally, and that Hezbollah can't survive without Iranian aid). The push to intervene in this conflict isn't for any ephemeral moral consideration, but rather coming from what a specific, well-placed faction of our political elite and news media considers their best interest.

So, let's see. We have Al Qaeda/Muslim Extremists on one side, and we have an assholish dictator on the other. Meanwhile, the one side is supported by the likes of Iran, and the other the likes of China and Russia. With as much support as China and russia give Assad, this could easily end up worse than either Iraq or A-Stan.

As long as we limit ourselves to air and missile strikes only we should be able to handle this quickly. If we try to put boots on the ground and built a government over there we'll be looking at another Iraq.

How about we just sit this one out. I mean completely sit it out. Don't supply arms to either side. Don't send a missle against anyone. Don't even condemn anyone. Do fark all nothing. When asked about it, our only response is, "not our problem."

Because every time we try to help we end up with a bunch of major assholes in power who hate us so much that they supply bombs to terrorists to use against us. Fark 'em. Let them kill each other off, then maybe someone more peaceful will move into the now empty county.

Nobody, and I mean nobody, (especially not liberals) cares about Libya anymore - even though it's now a lawless jihadi war zone, more or less run by the Muslim Brotherhood. However, it was useful for the dutiful state-media leading up to the last election, as it lasted months, not weeks. 'Operation Re-Election' created a lot of those neat commander-in-chief headlines that lead off the evening news (Slick Willy's 'Monica missiles' did the same thing).

Needless to say, there's no reporting on Libya anymore.

Syria will be useful in the exact same way. The real budget fight is coming up in September. The government has run out of money again and a large number of Republican lawmakers are refusing to pass a budget that funds Obamacare.

I would expect that the bombing will begin soon and will last as long as necessary for the state-media to remind the public that we must 'rally around the war-time president' and dispense with 'silly partisan bickering' when our troops are in harm's way.

AngryDragon:muck4doo: When do the anti-war protests start? It's been years since the last good protests.

He's right. I live nearish to dc, and war proteats dropped off SHARPLY immediately after the election. Some of the usual protest community should, by rights be busting out the signs and huge paper mache puppets right about now.

That is if they are primarily peace activists and not largely political shills.

ztrom:Heron:Israel does not equal Jews. Israel is a State run by war-mongers whose own military and secret service think need to chill the fark out, and Judaism is a world-wide religion with a century-long tradition of peacefulness, neighborliness, open-mindedness, empiricism, and scholarship.

The latter half did fark-all to save them in the centuries upon centuries that they've been treated as walking abominations by most of the Western world.

Did I say that it did? Europeans are disgusting assholes; humans in general are disgusting assholes. No part of their respective traditions and histories saved the Basques, the Welsh, the Irish, the Czechs, the Roma, the Ainu or any other "people" surrounded and outnumbered by another "people" -or attacked by a technically stronger foe- in any other part of the world, either. Be a minority anywhere before the 20th century, and in most places still, and chances were good you'd have a pretty rough time of it. This indisputably crappy fact of human existence doesn't make treating other people as sub-humans right, nor war-mongering just. That Europeans before WWII were shiatheads doesn't justify bull-dozing Palestinian homes, or reducing Beirut to rubble. You don't choose to be moral because it saves you; you choose to be moral because the only thing that gives life any value is choosing how you want to live it, and staying true to that decision.

Darkrover2:During Obama's first campaign, I asked people why we should elect as President someone that had less than half of the national political experience of the much lampooned Dan Quayle had when he ran for Vice-President.

TuteTibiImperes:The way Morsi was going he wouldn't made Mubarek look like Mother Theresa. The Egyptian Military stepped in to fix the problem before it got out of hand, and once they've handled the Muslim Brotherhood situation hopefully they step down and allow for democratic elections.

Israel is our strongest ally in the region, and we need to consider their needs in our operations over there.

The Egyptian military never stopped running things. Morsi tried to stand up to them and they proved that. They let that experiment last precisely as long as it took for the westernized urban minority to once more realize it was a minority, and when enough of them were willing to play along with their grandparents' deal to support military rule in exchange for second-hand modernization, they went right back to doing things more or less the way they have been since the Officers' Revolt.

At best, they'll allow a greater patina of powerless civilian control to sit in front of their rule; most likely, they'll just run it as an oligarchic council and shy away from the Strong Man excesses Nasser introduced and which threatened to transform into de facto monarchy under Mubarak(remember, he was trying to pass everything off to his son, whereas typically Head of State status has passed on to the next highest ranked military official when one "President" has stepped down or died).

As to Morsi, you need to understand exactly what he did. He tried to cut out the military and old military political clients from government. The power to legislate without judicial approval was necessary because all those judges are hold overs from the military regime. He attempted to re-install a democratically elected legislature -that yes, was mostly members of his Islamist part but that's because those are who the Egyptians freely elected; that party won for a reason, and that reason is its candidates got the most votes- which the military had disbanded through the Supreme Constitutional Court, which it controls. He declared nullified checks on Presidential and legislative power which the military had "passed" through the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces. His government also did and said some other things that worried upper-class Egyptians, but what do you expect; proper political behavior within a democracy is a tradition you build, not a switch you flip. In any new democracy not headed by the inhumanly humble and fanatically Republican personage of George Washington is going to run into some hiccups in its early days, particularly when it has a hostile military -and an upper class with a decades long history of supporting that military so long as it keeps the poors down- breathing down its neck.

What he was trying to do was put the Egyptian military back in its barracks permanently so they'd never play kingmaker again. Their response was to orchestrate shortages and foment hysteria through their allied media networks, which led to unrest, which they then used as the basis for orchestrating a coup. This stuff isn't new, and it wasn't even well hidden; hell, Morsi's wikipedia page covers all of it. The reason you didn't hear about this in that way is because the Europeans, particularly Cameron, were emphatically behind the Egyptian military on this(that's why the BBC led the way on pro-coup coverage), and our gov didn't really care one way or another because Morsi, in playing to his base to shore up his position against the military, had promised to do certain things we weren't comfortable with, like seek the humanitarian extradition of Omar Abdel-Rahman, and include clauses in a new Constitution declaring it in-line with "Islamic Law", which doesn't really mean much. Bahrain claims to be in-line with Islamic law and it's covered in brothels and bars; Saudi Arabia claims the same and it has roaming religious police who will behead you in public for blasphemy. "in-line with Islamic Law" covers a lot of ground, but it sounds scary to pants-wetting ignorant westerners who've never bothered to crack a single damn book about foreign policy or history, and don't know what "real politik" actually means, so there we are.

Morsi's term was the forces of genuine Egyptian democracy, which in this instance were lead by the Islamic Brotherhood, trying to stand up to the military that has suppressed them for decades. Morsi thought the military was weakened by Mubarak's fall, he thought that the participation of the upper-class urbanites in bringing that about was a sign of a schism between the military and its historical base of support, and he picked his fight accordingly. He thought wrong, he lost, and the military made sure to murder his daughter in public and violently crush his supporters in front of the world to drive the point home. Eat the propaganda if you want, I certainly can't stop you, but this wasn't some heroic and wildly ahistorical example of the Egyptian military suddenly finding it cared about democracy and valiantly standing up to a power-mad, universally hated tyrant. This was a military dictatorship that had temporarily stood aside and allowed its chosen "leader" to get taken down after he started entertaining visions of kingship reasserting its authority over the people, with the renewed support of at least some of the urban elites who'd abandoned it due to Mubarak's excesses and the political trends of the time.

21-7-b:I don't have enough information to say that I know who used the chemical weapons. The administration thinks it does

I think the time for some sort of Western intervention has come, though.

The administration needs to lay out that information to the voters then because if the administration is going to attack someone in their name then they need to be shown exactly why it is justified. Both sides have a motive for doing it or not doing it and both sides have denied it. One side is lying. How about we do that before shooting $200+ million dollars worth of missiles on them and give assistance to what amounts to Al Queda?

Unless they go outside of their own borders we need to stay out of it.

yeah it does. didn't you know, we have to the world's police force. any time there's some injustice in the world, we have to intervene. God forbid we let a country handle it's own problems without us telling every other nation on the planet how to run their lives.

I wouldn't say it's a "world policeman" thing really. We're perfectly happy letting oppressive governments that serve our strategic interests -like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now Egypt once again- deal with democracy protestors with violent crackdowns and persecution. We're making a big stink about Syria because 1)The chauvinists who run the Israeli government right now think getting rid of the Assads will break Hezbollah and leave Syria too screwed up to even complain about the Golan Heights, giving them total control of Northern Israel(and most importantly, the water sources of Northern Israel) for the foreseeable future and 2) plenty of conservatives in the US and Israel see getting rid of the Assads as a potential geopolitical victory against Iran(because they think Syria is an Iranian client rather than an ally, and that Hezbollah can't survive without Iranian aid). The push to intervene in this conflict isn't for any ephemeral moral consideration, but rather coming from what a specific, well-placed faction of our political elite and news media considers their best interest.

FFS what is up with all of these Jewish conspiracy theories?

Israel does not equal Jews. Israel is a State run by war-mongers whose own military and secret service think need to chill the fark out, and Judaism is a world-wide religion with a century-long tradition of peacefulness, neighborliness, open-mindedness, empiricism, and scholarship. Pointing out that Israel has clear interests in the Syrian conflict, which it has expressed publicly, and that it has been involved in propping up the rebels from nearly the beginning is not a conspiracy theory. It's basic farking lit ...

Israel is surrounded by people who want to see the country demolished and every Jewish citizen killed. They're flanked by nations that they embarrassed in a war back in the '60s and who still can't concede that Israel has a right to the territories it seized as spoils of that war.

Wasn't there a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this year or last year that was claimed to have been conducted by Assad right off the bat only to have an actual investigation a few months later show the rebels conducted the attack?

Old_Chief_Scott:oldfarthenry: Yes - only a monster would poison-gas his citizens. Let's humanely bomb the f**k out of them instead!

Ding!

What can we possible hope might be accomplished by air strikes?

Hit munitions dumps, power plants, communications arrays, airfields, military bases, command HQs, etc. Basically reduce the Syrian armed forces to rubble and put them on equal footing with the rebels. Then leave and let them finish fighting it out and figure out how to rebuild.

Giltric:snocone: omnibus_necanda_sunt: And if we and NATO do go in, and Russia starts selling weapons to Assad, the political blowback will make passing their anti-gay law six months before the Olympics look like a decree of universal free pony ownership.

You need a new scorecard. Can't tell the pawns from the kings w/o a scorecard.So far, King is still hidden, prolly castled long ago and not for your eyes.

At the end of the game, both the king and the pawn is put in the same box.

For those of you who say that the Syrian government would be above using chemical weapons in this war, I thought I'd leave this here. It's a story about an attack by Syrian government forces on a place called Saraqeb, near Aleppo in northern Syria, on April 29 of this year. Local people claimed that during the attack, personnel in a government helicopter dropped bombs that contained a poisonous gas. Eight local people were taken to a nearby hospital around this time, all apparently suffering from nausea and breathing problems. One of them died.

There was a followup to this. Blood and urine samples from five of the hospital patients were taken to a lab maintained by the DGA, the French military's arms-buying office. Chemists in the lab said that the results of their tests indicated the presence of sarin in the urine of one patient and in the blood of two others. I can't find this story in English, so everyone please pardon my French. I'll translate.

"The samples taken after the attack on April 29 by a government helicopter in Saraqeb (Idlib province), in the northern part of the country, are more probative. Metabolized sarin was identified in the urine of one victim, and regenerated sarin (that is to say, in its pure state) was identified in the blood of two of the other victims, in once case at a high level of concentration (9.5 nanograms per milliliter)

The Saraqeb samples were from five victims, one of whom died. They were taken by medical staff at a hospital in the Idlib region and handed over to the French government on May 4, before arriving at the lab on May 9. According to the experts, blood samples are impossible to fake, unlike urine samples, which can at times be tampered with."

Popular Opinion:as i pointed out earlier, we helped saddam gas tens of thousands of iranians, when it suited our interests.

No we didn't. We had no participation in that mess. Not one bit. We did not provide any intelligence when he gassed the Kurds. We did not provide materials of any sort. The closest we came to any help was when an American company illegally sold some electronics to him and they got prosecuted for doing that.

The capital of Syria has been inhabited since the invention of agriculture, and was a major stop on the Silk Road, the most important cultural crossroads in the history of everything ever that ever was, ever.

And please note that the configuration of the Earth's landmasses have not changed more than a few dozen yards in all that time.

Syria is incredibly important. Unlike mountainous Afghanistan, spillover from Syria will destabilize the entire region. And Syria is on the Mediterranean, right on Europe's doorstep. It was a rapidly-modernizing, vibrant, uncharacteristically secular place. Letting the conflict continue is simply NOT. AN. OPTION.

Let me repeat.

NOT. AN. OPTION.

Too many negative variables are at play to allow this to continue. In a global economy, this kind of shiat hits everyone's fans.

We will not be alone. The entirety of Europe opposes Assad, and there are secular rebels in Syria. For the moment.

This will be unpleasant. The unfortunate parallels with the Iraq war are grating.

But simply because it's in the Middle East doesn't mean we can ignore it. The world no longer allows any country to take its ball and go home. International politics is too complex for temper tantrums.

Everyone saying "Oh look, it's another war in the Middle East over WMDs; it's obviously bullshiat and we should ignore it" is simply advertising their lack of integrative complexity and complete failure to grasp nuance.

It's ok because my side is in office, and it's all Bush's fault anyway.

Popular Opinion:TuteTibiImperes: Popular Opinion: TuteTibiImperes: Our own government seems to believe it was Assad, unless there's extremely damning evidence otherwise, trying to claim it was a false flag operation seems a bit ridiculous.

our own government is a bunch of hypocritical liars. the hypocrisy is staggering.it's only ok if we kill babies?

To my knowledge our government does not have pro-baby killing stance. Unless you're trying to troll regarding abortion, which of course is the termination of a medical condition, and not the death of a baby, so you'd still be wrong.

do you have any idea how many women and children non-combatants we have killed in the iraq and afghan wars?add to the drone "mistakes" or collateral dammage scattered around the rest of the region...

None of it was intentional. Civilian collateral damage is an ugly fact of war, but ultimately unavoidable, especially due to the nature of the combatants/insurgents in Iraq/Afghanistan.

There's a huge difference from accidentally killing civilians when trying to take out a military target and intentionally targeting your own citizens with chemical weapons.

No. Bombing Assad is the best way to help AQ. The secular rebels should have refused to be involved with AQ in any way and let that be known from the start. History shows us again and again that allowing poisonous elements into an organization of any type eventually leads to that poison taking over the organization. Unless the secular rebels are going to literally kill the AQ elements in their ranks after they win then no matter what I cannot support them, and I don't see that happening. I was behind the rebels until AQ joined them, then I decided that letting Assad be Assad was the better choice in the long run.

Fjornir:Ignoring my position on military involvement in the region you are aware that there is a civilian population there in addition to Assad's forces and the Rebels, right?

Yes, of course. They are not our problem. I know that that sounds cold hearted but they really are not our problem. I'd be fine with parking a hospital ship off of their coast and helping them. I'd be fine with air dropping food and medical supplies to them. I would not be fine with bombing them, which by the way is exactly what we would be doing if we get involved.

omnibus_necanda_sunt:You realize the reason Al Qaeda was even able to establish a presence there in competition with the Free Syrian Army is because we stood by and let Assad's men bash children's heads in with shovels for two and a half years?

And you do realize that letting the conflict go on lets Al Qaeda build goodwill by appearing to be "the good guys," right?

If it weren't for this, they'd still be known among Muslims as "those assholes who kill other Muslims."

Now, they're "freedom fighters."

The likes of AQ do the same and worse. Stoning to death a woman for getting raped? AQ. Burning down a school full of little girls because they were outraged that they were being taught? AQ. Sorry. if I have to pick between douchebag and turd sammich I'll pick douchebag. At least I won't have to eat it.

Please take note that I have no love for Assad. It's just that I have even less love for the alternative.

tirob: Do you think that Assad is necessarily a rational actor these days? The man has after all been under a huge amount of pressure for the past two years.

He has been "Winning" the civil war in the past 3 months or so. He had no reason to use chemical attacks. WMD's are last ditch weapons precisely because of the possible consequences like the one being discussed in this very thread. Unless he and his advisers have gone completely insane, of which there is no supporting evidence, he and his advisers all know this.

Using WMD's is a game changer and you don't change the game when you are winning. That has worked exactly once in history and it was on a MUCH larger scale than this.

Not so sure I agree that chemical weapons have historically only been used as a last resort. The first large-scale use of poison gas during WWI was by Germany in April/May 1915, at what became known as the Second Battle of Ypres. At the time, Germany, while it was in some trouble, was in no danger of immediate defeat. The use of chemical weapons by Germany was just as shocking then as their use would be today, and the Entente protested that the Germans were violating international law. This notwithstanding, the Entente itself began using poison gas later that year.

Popular Opinion:that's not entirely true, if you consider sarin and mustard gas such weapons.

saddam used chemical weapons and killed thousands of iranians, and thousands of kurds in his own country.do you know who helped him, knowing he was going to use chemical weapons? yup, the US.

And France, and Russia\CCCP. Those guys supplied a hell of a lot more weaponry to Iraq than we did. We sold ~$500 million dollars worth of dual use tech to them. A small part of that was chemical arms related such as tubing but far more of it were things like computers, machining equipment and so on. Our contribution to Iraq's weaponry was right around 2%. The rest they got from others who were more than happy to arm them for oil money. Cases in point: the attack on the USS Stark was carried out by a French made fighter using a French made missile. The tanks that we destroyed on the "Road of death" were all Soviet made as were the RADAR systems we obliterated. The claim that we armed Iraq is weak and denies reality.

jaybeezey:I think this the thread where everyone is tired of this shiat an realizes that there is no "win" in this action for the US.

US Gets involved and Syrian Army manages a win. Assad still in power, Syrian leaders hate US. Russia looks like King shiat of fark Island. The US tax payers lose.

US gets involved And rebels win. AlQueda steamrolls any sane faction of the FSA and installs new Islamic Regime and Syrian Leaders Hate US. The US taxpayers lose.

It's like choosing side in a knife fight between a rapist and a pedophile.

Exactly. This.

There is no winning this if we get involved. The only justification for doing anything now is to save face after the president has set his red lines and they have been stepped over. That's not a good enough reason for me. It's just as bad as Bush going into Iraq to kill the guy who tried to kill his daddy.

The point where we should get involved is when it actually involves us either directly or indirectly through our allies being attacked. Until then let them sort it all out internally.

tirob:Do you think that Assad is necessarily a rational actor these days? The man has after all been under a huge amount of pressure for the past two years.

He has been "Winning" the civil war in the past 3 months or so. He had no reason to use chemical attacks. WMD's are last ditch weapons precisely because of the possible consequences like the one being discussed in this very thread. Unless he and his advisers have gone completely insane, of which there is no supporting evidence, he and his advisers all know this.

Using WMD's is a game changer and you don't change the game when you are winning. That has worked exactly once in history and it was on a MUCH larger scale than this.

NSA spying on American citizens (It was Bush)Drone strikes on American citizens (they had it coming)Raiding more medical marijuana facilities than 8 years of Bush (he was only enforcing the law never mind that he's issued a memo skirting the laws on immigration).Use of Military in Libya without Congressional approval (it wasn't war!)And now he's beating the war drum and you're gleefully beating it with him.Going after whistleblowers (dirty traitors).

I really hate the GOP but liberals folding like a deck of cards on principles I used to think were important to you...piss me off as much as the GOP now. You have no principles that are sacred anymore. Stop justifying it because it's YOUR guy.

Kit Fister:Maul555: Anyone who doesn't want us to bomb needs to be wishing Obama never made any of those red line speeches. Now we have to bomb or else we lose credibility. if we lose credibility, then anybody can use chemical weapons on whomever they want, because who's gonna stop them? If not the US, then no one will...

Syria has called our bluff, and now the bombs need to fall.

In that region of the world, we already have zero credibility. I refer you to the previous Iraq campaign which hoodwinked the entire world and ended up with major egg all over our face, and our general behavior in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Lebanon, Israel, etc. etc. etc. going back decades.

So, basically, all we get out of it is even MORE crap if we go in guns blazing without taking a second to realize what exactly the outcome might be.

You think we don't have any credibility in the middle east? We gained no new friends, but we have plenty of credibility. One attack on new york brought 2 invasions and over a decade of war, with lots of bodies everywhere... I think we have gained a kind of credibility... The kind that says bad shiats gonna happen if you make us come over there...

They've been spreading this bullshiat about Syria for weeks now, trying as hard as they can to get everyone fired up about something. They made up this shiat about chemical weapons to get the people riled the same exact way they lied about WMDs. We bought it then, should we really buy it now? They're LYING to us. They're chomping at the bit to invade Syria, any chance they can get. It's all lies. Do NOT believe it. I have no idea what they WANT in Syria, but the fact is, they're going no matter what the reason. I'm so sick of this bullshiat. I saw it coming WEEKS ago.

21-7-b:BMFPitt: I'm just waiting to post the headline, "Obama has been nearly identical to Bush in many areas, but at least he hasn't started multiple wars."

Obama seems to finish wars rather than start them, but whatever

To be fair, he really hasn't faced an opportunity that would really have put him to the test in that regard. He inherited two police actions and a shiatload of poor decisions from his predecessor, and other than using some bombs in Libya where no real intervention was needed, we haven't seen a case where it was even remotely justified.

The true test here is to see whether Obama follows in Bush's footsteps and declares that because WMDs, we must invade; or whether he decides that the political fallout from spearheading yet another intervention would only put one of the last nails in the US's coffin and thus stay the fark out of it unless or until the UN as a whole chose to act with military force -- and even then, hopefully opts to donate a few bombs, some jet fuel, and real-world ordnance delivery training of pilots to the cause instead of boots on the ground.

Lt. Cheese Weasel:dr_blasto: OK, then. I guess I'll just stick with what we actually have evidence to support.

Sure, facts. *chortle*......It is a fact nothing was found in Iraq. It is also a fact a large convoy of trucks left Iraq and went to Syria as we ginned up the invasion. I'm sure it was just food and t-shirts. I can't ask you to prove a negative, I only have my suspicions and some extremely interesting coincidences. It's ok, call me a nut. I don't care. The Sarin came from somewhere, close. That is also a fact.

We are a few sternly worded letters away from any action, at the least

I hope so. I'd really rather not have this turn into WWIII after we get involved against Assad leading China and Russia to get involved on Assad's side, and given the military prowess of some of our "allies", and the general feelings about us after the Spying thing, as well as 8 years of Bush, I'm not sure we could count on anyone but maybe Britain to back us up. Which means that, in all likelihood, despite possibly being technologically greater, we'd probably lose based on sheer numbers. Not to mention, you'd have the anti-American middle eastern factions piling on as well.

We're just not ready for another fight. We don't have the leadership or the resources to go toe to toe with a big force in a classic war for any length of time, not without some pretty big help from other nations...and really, besides China and Russia, who else is there? India? They don't have the resources to go to war any more than we do. And herein lies the crux of our problem: We (and by we I mean Bush* and everyone who supported/mislead him depending on whom you believe the narrative from) blew a lot of the preparedness and fighting readiness by going on a campaign of liberation in Iraq and Afghanistan in a ham-fisted attempt to get "the terrorists". I was right there supporting it at the beginning.

Right now, considering the pace and dynamics of the battlefield something like Syria would involve if it turned into a bigger conflict (and unless Russia and China are all talk and no action, I don't see how they could not step in to support Assad along with the Iranians), I just don't see this as a winning proposition. in fact, in my worst nightmares, it stars out as a simple depose-the-dictator-and-white-knight-for-the-rebellion and then turns into a giant escalation where our tactical choices go from which bombs to load onto the drones to how young do we want to draft and just how many nukes can we use without totally farking up the planet?

So, maybe a llot of this is paranoia, and maybe none of that will happen. But given our choices are the known of letting the two sides duke it out and stay the fark out of it or wading in like an idiot again with unpredictable results...god help me, let them kill each other and leave us out of it.

Lt. Cheese Weasel:It is also a fact a large convoy of trucks left Iraq and went to Syria as we ginned up the invasion. I'm sure it was just food and t-shirts. I can't ask you to prove a negative, I only have my suspicions and some extremely interesting coincidences.

Then why did the Bush Administration shrug its' shoulders at Saddam's missing WMDs instead of shouting from the hills that they were all now in Syria?

If you think you have all the facts, I got news for you. You don't. But if you put some lipstick on that chicken tonight, I'm sure you'll both enjoy it.

Nice attempt at subject change. There is no, zero, feedback that Curveball was anything but a talking head that told the spooks what they wanted to hear. Your premise that he was in effect "due" to be correct on something has no basis in fact.

Fine, if you say so. I wish Sarin gas had a footprint like uranium or plutonium isotopes. At any rate, you never addressed my query about where Syria's gas came from. Care to try that? They didn't make it. And Putin didn't give it to them. Neither did Iran. Who did? The Easter Bunny?

tirob:Apik0r0s: tirob: Apik0r0s: Darkrover2: So we know they gassed their own people.

How will the public react when we invade to end WMD's and don't find any?

I ask again, how in the fark do we know that?

Because Zionist media and leaders who pick up millions in AIPAC money said so?

We don't know that. Yet. But I think there is some evidence that the Syrian government gassed its own people even though the Zionist media and the AIPAC shills said they did. To wit: 3600 people who all came down in the same morning with symptoms that led doctors to believe they had all been exposed to a neurotoxin, the Syrian government's conventional bombardment of the area where those people lived over the course of the next several days after the symptoms were first reported, the fact that just about all the people affected were Sunni Muslims, and the dearth of reliable evidence that the rebels possess chemical weapons or that they know how to handle and deliver them.

Makes sense, that the Syrian government would use chemical weapons in such an obvious way on the eve of a UN team arriving to investigate chemical weapons use. No detective in the world would buy that, they know you look at who benefits.

As long as we're speculating now, I think that Assad benefits in two ways: 1) it's 355 of his perceived enemies dead, thousands more in the hospital, and a lesson to everyone else in Syria that if you look sideways at the forces of the government, you could be next, and 2) a message to the UN sock puppets of the Zionist entity that the Syrian government is sovereign and will do whatever it likes on its own territory, thank you.

You realize that no one who uses phrases like 'sock puppets of the Zionist entity' can ever hope to be taken seriously, right?

lordjupiter:Darkrover2: During Obama's first campaign, I asked people why we should elect as President someone that had less than half of the national political experience of the much lampooned Dan Quayle had when he ran for Vice-President.

the money is in the banana stand:21-7-b: Radioactive Ass: 21-7-b: I don't have enough information to say that I know who used the chemical weapons. The administration thinks it does

I think the time for some sort of Western intervention has come, though.

The administration needs to lay out that information to the voters then because if the administration is going to attack someone in their name then they need to be shown exactly why it is justified. Both sides have a motive for doing it or not doing it and both sides have denied it. One side is lying. How about we do that before shooting $200+ million dollars worth of missiles on them and give assistance to what amounts to Al Queda?

Unless they go outside of their own borders we need to stay out of it.

I don't get this argument that we shouldn't intervene because we would be strengthening the syrian Al Qaeda franchise. Obviously we need to intervene in a way that doesn't strengthen Al Qaeda. What has so far strengthened Al Qaeda is our not intervening, and the longer time passes without us intervening the stronger they look set to become. They slaughtered 450 Kurds the other day, for example, and their ranks are now being daily swelled by underequipped FSA fighters

Show me how to effectively target and isolate our opposition. THAT is the problem.

Yeah, it is a problem, but as I understand it we can supply anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons which we can stop falling into the wrong hands because of the communication equipment they contain and the ability to remotely deactivate them. That places the FSA in a position whereby they can fight Assad, rather than simply being pounded day-after-day, as they have been, which should in turn make them seem more militarily attractive to those fighting than the Al Qaeda affiliates.

Ultimately if Syria is to stay intact the government will need to govern the loyalists, the rebels and the Kurds, and, given the last two-and-a-half years, not to mention the preceding 50, to govern without repression is going to require a meaningful coalition. In many ways, then, the obviousness of the difficulty inherent in the problem makes the solution easier: the country is going to need a meaningful, inclusive constitution that guarantees the groups some degree of safety and autonomy and has to sideline the all-or-nothing approach of Assad and Al Qaeda

The longer it takes us to do something the more atrocities the Al Qaeda franchises and Assad will commit and the more repressive the victorious parties are likely to be

Is it not painfully obvious that the Sarin attack was launched by Russia?

They take the moral high ground, only reluctantly allowing America to fire Tomahawks at Syria. And in the meantime, they get to watch closely to see how their missile defence systems work in a real assault. And, to top it all off, it drives one of their buyers back in the store to restock all their munitions.

America spends bajillions on yet another failed war in the middle east, further diminishing their economy, and humiliating themselves in the process.

the money is in the banana stand:What exactly would the conditions for "winning" be? That has pretty much has been the problem with modern warfare with respect to US intervention for quite some time now. If the conditions for winning were to simply decimate the opposing force, that would be easy. You can't kill ideals and fix the problem in the Middle East with bombs. So Syria is gassing its people, we roll up and stomp strategic military targets and Assad is deposed. Then what?

First they install a private central bank to issue the state currency as loan to the new "government" with interest. Next all Public/Government Natural resources and rights to them are sold off to foreign Corporations. Now the country is in perpetual debt slavery to foreign banks and can never possibly pay back the loans because more debt then wealth is created. This has been done time and time again, usually orchestrated by arming both sides of a conflict and then telling them that the other side wants to kill them. All War is war by deception for the profit of banking interests. War is nothing more than Financial transfer from the people to the elite through fraud.

...but there is the issue of 9 billion people on a planet built for about 3 billion...max.

Discuss....

We need a way to do mass-sterilization from the air. No killing. Put countries/tribes/regions on notice to get their houses in order or else. They don't, then they can live out their lives watching themselves fade.

The sad part is that you assume I mean only poor/undeveloped/disadvantaged people. Nothing along those lines matters!

cc_rider:21-7-b: Kit Fister: So, let's see. We have Al Qaeda/Muslim Extremists on one side, and we have an assholish dictator on the other. Meanwhile, the one side is supported by the likes of Iran, and the other the likes of China and Russia. With as much support as China and russia give Assad, this could easily end up worse than either Iraq or A-Stan.

HOW THE fark COULD GETTING INVOLVED POSSIBLY BE A GOOD IDEA?!

Iran is supporting Assad. Get a clue

Yes, a lot of us do understand that for the neo-cons, Syria has always been about a "back door into Iran". That still doesn't explain why it's a good idea for the US to get involved.

Read the comment I was replying to, ffs. Middle East expert Kit Fister stated the Iranians were supporting the rebels

Heron:Israel does not equal Jews. Israel is a State run by war-mongers whose own military and secret service think need to chill the fark out, and Judaism is a world-wide religion with a century-long tradition of peacefulness, neighborliness, open-mindedness, empiricism, and scholarship.

But that's the whole game now, one that everyone from Wolf Blitzer to Jon Stewart are playing - pretending that Judaism is monolithic; that Benji Netanyahu speaks for all Jews. It's bullshiat, of course, but it has a long history of working. At least until it doesn't work any more and peoples go on a rampage against all Jews. It's only happened about 200 times in history.

If you're a Jew who is against warmongering every one of Israel's neighbors into pure chaos, bombing wells in Lebanon or allowing non-Jews the vote; you're not an anti-semite, you're a self-loather, a kapo.

Heron:Israel does not equal Jews. Israel is a State run by war-mongers whose own military and secret service think need to chill the fark out, and Judaism is a world-wide religion with a century-long tradition of peacefulness, neighborliness, open-mindedness, empiricism, and scholarship.

The latter half did fark-all to save them in the centuries upon centuries that they've been treated as walking abominations by most of the Western world.

darth_badger:InmanRoshi: darth_badger: US wars are started with false flags and this will be the next one. This will keep people employed in America and is good for the military industrial complex.

The only hope I have is that the stock market tanked immediately after Kerry's speech. The American people don't have anymore appetitite for another interventionist war in the Middle East. The little flags and the yellow ribbon car magnets have lost their charm.

That will not happen. The rich are sure to move money to make money. American Idol and the NFL will stop most people from being terrified.

Don't forget comic book movies and "geek culture" to keep middle aged men in perpetual suspended adolescence so that they're easier to control.

Kit Fister:So, let's see. We have Al Qaeda/Muslim Extremists on one side, and we have an assholish dictator on the other. Meanwhile, the one side is supported by the likes of Iran, and the other the likes of China and Russia. With as much support as China and russia give Assad, this could easily end up worse than either Iraq or A-Stan.

Kit Fister:So, let's see. We have Al Qaeda/Muslim Extremists on one side, and we have an assholish dictator on the other. Meanwhile, the one side is supported by the likes of Iran, and the other the likes of China and Russia. With as much support as China and russia give Assad, this could easily end up worse than either Iraq or A-Stan.

HOW THE fark COULD GETTING INVOLVED POSSIBLY BE A GOOD IDEA?!

Billion Dollar pallets of cash (that can just vanish) seemed to be a motivating factor in Iraq.

yeah it does. didn't you know, we have to the world's police force. any time there's some injustice in the world, we have to intervene. God forbid we let a country handle it's own problems without us telling every other nation on the planet how to run their lives.

I wouldn't say it's a "world policeman" thing really. We're perfectly happy letting oppressive governments that serve our strategic interests -like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now Egypt once again- deal with democracy protestors with violent crackdowns and persecution. We're making a big stink about Syria because 1)The chauvinists who run the Israeli government right now think getting rid of the Assads will break Hezbollah and leave Syria too screwed up to even complain about the Golan Heights, giving them total control of Northern Israel(and most importantly, the water sources of Northern Israel) for the foreseeable future and 2) plenty of conservatives in the US and Israel see getting rid of the Assads as a potential geopolitical victory against Iran(because they think Syria is an Iranian client rather than an ally, and that Hezbollah can't survive without Iranian aid). The push to intervene in this conflict isn't for any ephemeral moral consideration, but rather coming from what a specific, well-placed faction of our political elite and news media considers their best interest.

FFS what is up with all of these Jewish conspiracy theories?

Israel does not equal Jews. Israel is a State run by war-mongers whose own military and secret service think need to chill the fark out, and Judaism is a world-wide religion with a centuries-long tradition of peacefulness, neighborliness, open-mindedness, empiricism, and scholarship. Pointing out that Israel has clear interests in the Syrian conflict, which it has expressed publicly, and that it has been involved in propping up the rebels from nearly the beginning is not a conspiracy theory. It's basic farking lit ...

yeah it does. didn't you know, we have to the world's police force. any time there's some injustice in the world, we have to intervene. God forbid we let a country handle it's own problems without us telling every other nation on the planet how to run their lives.

I wouldn't say it's a "world policeman" thing really. We're perfectly happy letting oppressive governments that serve our strategic interests -like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now Egypt once again- deal with democracy protestors with violent crackdowns and persecution. We're making a big stink about Syria because 1)The chauvinists who run the Israeli government right now think getting rid of the Assads will break Hezbollah and leave Syria too screwed up to even complain about the Golan Heights, giving them total control of Northern Israel(and most importantly, the water sources of Northern Israel) for the foreseeable future and 2) plenty of conservatives in the US and Israel see getting rid of the Assads as a potential geopolitical victory against Iran(because they think Syria is an Iranian client rather than an ally, and that Hezbollah can't survive without Iranian aid). The push to intervene in this conflict isn't for any ephemeral moral consideration, but rather coming from what a specific, well-placed faction of our political elite and news media considers their best interest.

FFS what is up with all of these Jewish conspiracy theories?

Israel does not equal Jews. Israel is a State run by war-mongers whose own military and secret service think need to chill the fark out, and Judaism is a world-wide religion with a century-long tradition of peacefulness, neighborliness, open-mindedness, empiricism, and scholarship. Pointing out that Israel has clear interests in the Syrian conflict, which it has expressed publicly, and that it has been involved in propping up the rebels from nearly the beginning is not a conspiracy theory. It's basic farking literacy.

SithLord:TuteTibiImperes: As long as we limit ourselves to air and missile strikes only we should be able to handle this quickly. If we try to put boots on the ground and built a government over there we'll be looking at another Iraq.

Do CIA Assets and Spec Ops count as boots on the ground?

In an ideal world I'd love to see us handle most of our forceful foreign negotiations that way. Have CIA teams keep track of what's going on, and if they see a problem developing, allow them to nip it in the bud before it grows big enough to make the news or require military intervention.

yeah it does. didn't you know, we have to the world's police force. any time there's some injustice in the world, we have to intervene. God forbid we let a country handle it's own problems without us telling every other nation on the planet how to run their lives.

I wouldn't say it's a "world policeman" thing really. We're perfectly happy letting oppressive governments that serve our strategic interests -like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and now Egypt once again- deal with democracy protestors with violent crackdowns and persecution. We're making a big stink about Syria because 1)The chauvinists who run the Israeli government right now think getting rid of the Assads will break Hezbollah and leave Syria too screwed up to even complain about the Golan Heights, giving them total control of Northern Israel(and most importantly, the water sources of Northern Israel) for the foreseeable future and 2) plenty of conservatives in the US and Israel see getting rid of the Assads as a potential geopolitical victory against Iran(because they think Syria is an Iranian client rather than an ally, and that Hezbollah can't survive without Iranian aid). The push to intervene in this conflict isn't for any ephemeral moral consideration, but rather coming from what a specific, well-placed faction of our political elite and news media considers their best interest.

The way Morsi was going he wouldn't made Mubarek look like Mother Theresa. The Egyptian Military stepped in to fix the problem before it got out of hand, and once they've handled the Muslim Brotherhood situation hopefully they step down and allow for democratic elections.

Israel is our strongest ally in the region, and we need to consider their needs in our operations over there.

InmanRoshi:Darkrover2: During Obama's first campaign, I asked people why we should elect as President someone that had less than half of the national political experience of the much lampooned Dan Quayle had when he ran for Vice-President.

Apparently the reason is to set a socialist course for the US and generally Fark everything up more than it was when he was elected.

P.S. Note: Socialism worked out economically very well for Italy, Spain, and Greece, who not only had nearly 6 decades of peace, but peace paid for by the US, not their own GDPs...didn't it? How can you not have to pay much for your defense for 60 years and still go broke?

Darkrover2:During Obama's first campaign, I asked people why we should elect as President someone that had less than half of the national political experience of the much lampooned Dan Quayle had when he ran for Vice-President.

Apparently the reason is to set a socialist course for the US and generally Fark everything up more than it was when he was elected.

P.S. Note: Socialism worked out economically very well for Italy, Spain, and Greece, who not only had nearly 6 decades of peace, but peace paid for by the US, not their own GDPs...didn't it? How can you not have to pay much for your defense for 60 years and still go broke?

DoomPaul:Wasn't there a chemical weapons attack in Syria earlier this year or last year that was claimed to have been conducted by Assad right off the bat only to have an actual investigation a few months later show the rebels conducted the attack?

I'm betting on the rebels/Al Quida as well.

Assad is farking clever. He has a medical degree, and is a specialist in eye surgery.

Clever people can of course be psychos, but psychos usually have a strong sense of selfpreservation. Launching a gas attack the same day the UN inspectors arrive seems out of character for such a person.

During Obama's first campaign, I asked people why we should elect as President someone that had less than half of the national political experience of the much lampooned Dan Quayle had when he ran for Vice-President.

Apparently the reason is to set a socialist course for the US and generally Fark everything up more than it was when he was elected.

P.S. Note: Socialism worked out economically very well for Italy, Spain, and Greece, who not only had nearly 6 decades of peace, but peace paid for by the US, not their own GDPs...didn't it? How can you not have to pay much for your defense for 60 years and still go broke?

yeah it does. didn't you know, we have to the world's police force. any time there's some injustice in the world, we have to intervene. God forbid we let a country handle it's own problems without us telling every other nation on the planet how to run their lives.

The world should just get it over with...gas that entire section of the globe, killing just about everyone. We can then have a global pity-party, stating it really sucked having to do it but it was necessary.